#but they would have connected on such a level

[infiniteglitterfall]

Disclaimer: I assume we're talking about shit like, idk, locker rooms. I don't even know where else people are "nude in public." Beaches? What are we calling nudity? So if this is a dogwhistle I'm not recognizing, please let me know.

There are a lot of excellent points in the notes. As well as a lot of people sharing about being treated like their existence harms the people who can see them.

But I think @a-mx-writer is kinda nailing it here.

Here's how I would explain the connection between that and fascism.

TL;DR: The idea that we have to protect [vulnerable group] by eliminating [unwanted people] has been used as a tool of oppression over and over and over and over again.

It has never protected anyone. It has never been shown to help anybody.

The only reason anyone ever thinks, "Some people might be harmed by seeing you be like that!" is that they've unwittingly internalized this trope.

Just off the top of my head: Eliminate being trans in public, to protect women and/or abuse survivors. Eliminate being a woman in public, to protect women. Eliminate being a Black woman in public, to protect white women. Eliminate being a Black teen in public, to protect white girls. Eliminate being an undocumented immigrant in public, to protect white girls and white women.

There's quite a pattern, isn't there.

Fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of the nation over the individual. This model of government stands in contrast to liberal democracies that support individual rights, competitive elections, and political dissent.

A democracy is about "we the people" being the government. We each have the right to vote for our representatives, to run for office, to talk to our representatives, to vote for what they do with our tax money and how they run everything.

How is this relevant here? A democracy inherently assumes its citizens have a right to exist. In public.

You can't participate in the system if you aren't allowed to exist in public. You can't vote, or run for office, or work a government job, without at some point existing in public.

(Even if you have a mail-in ballot, you probably need to take it to a drop box or your own mailbox or something.)

Fascism is the opposite.

Extreme nationalism: Fascist leaders believe in the supremacy of certain groups of people based on characteristics such as race, religion, ethnicity, and nationality.

Fascism explicitly treats the visible existence of other groups of people as dissent.

Fascism crushes dissent.

That extends to fascist leaders, too:

Cult of personality: Fascist regimes cultivate images of their leaders as great figures to be loved and admired.... To maintain this powerful image, Mussolini prohibited journalists from reporting on his age or health issues.

Even Mussolini couldn't be old, ill, or disabled in public without losing power.

And here's the biggest connection:

Popular mobilization:  Although both authoritarian and fascist governments are anti-democratic, leave little room for dissent, and strive to centralize power, the two types of regimes are not the same. Authoritarian governments want their populations to remain passive and demobilized. On the other hand, fascist regimes seek to energize public participation in society through government-organized channels.

Authoritarians are hoping people won't push back against their policies.

Fascists are encouraging people to carry out their policies at the individual level.

That's where we loop back around to the original post.

The idea that it harms other people to see how you look, or what you're doing, is like... the worst boundaries ever??

People can have all kinds of triggers. It's impossible to guess what might trigger someone else. Someone could be deeply triggered by seeing the same kind of car their abuser used to drive, or the same sweater their abuser used to wear.

Or they might not be triggered by anything of the sort. And instead get utterly T-boned one day by the sight of some kind of condiment or gesture they've seen a million times before. Because it just happened to bring up some big emotion/memory that was ready to come up that time.

NOBODY can control that stuff.

As the saying goes: Anybody who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

In this case, they're trying to sell you on letting them control your body. Or on helping them control other people.

What you do. How you dress. Who you date. What body parts you have. Where you have them. What color they are. What size they are.

The idea that we have to protect [vulnerable group] via laws eliminating [unwanted people] is a tool of oppression.

The idea that we should each be individually eliminating unwanted people - whether that's from view, from public life, or from existence - is a tool of fascism.

the people who go "we shouldn't be so open about nudity because it could trigger someone's dysphoria" are like two steps max removed from "fat people being fat in public could trigger someone with an ed". like peoples' bodies are not the problem here, trying to restrict someone else's body because of how you personally feel is indistinguishable from conservative praxis. i'm sorry if that sounds harsh but there is basically no interpretation of "we need to control the bodies of [demographic]" that does not fall down the slippery slope of fascism.

[prettyboykatsuki]

WHAT YOUR LOVE&DEEPSPACE MAIN LI SAYS ABOUT YOU

or what i would assume about you based on your favored LI. this post is not meant to be taken super seriously and is not meant to offend anyone 🙂‍↔️

its for fun!!! whether or not it applies to you Varies but itd be nice to know how accurate it was to you!

some notes: i play this game in cn and my characterization is influenced mostly from this. also i view the relationship between calebmc not as childhood friends but adopted siblings. i respect your interpretation so pls respect mine but it doesnt come up much in the post itself.

RAFAYEL

For most Raf stans, your interest in sassy and melodramatic men tends to have some history behind it. Whether that be in real life or in your other fictional men, you find yourself drawn to a specific kind of character type over and over, easily swayed by eccentric charm and large displays of emotion and grandeur. Perhaps as a result of needing convincing of the depths of someones devotion, rather then being swayed easily with words.

You may be the type of person that struggles to be with people who they don't have much in common with. The safety net of common ground, of someone who feels like a flirtatious friend at times and not a domestic partner, and the playfulness of the ultimately serious connection gives you a sense of quiet assurance and lets you breathe. Intimate relationships both friendship and otherwise can feel overwhelming.

You are especially conscious of your autonomy in relationships and hold a fear of losing yourself in love. The way Rafayel is able to navigate and subtly assure his commitment to you while also not always forcing you confront it brings you a sense of comfort no other LI really can.

You could be fearful about the idea of losing yourself in the act of loving someone else before you ever realize you're doing it. You may have a tendency to emotional extremes, though outwardly you seem ambivalent to most things. Internally though, the depth of your obsession and internalized longing for your partner genuinely inhibit you in your life for a period, in a way you have trouble articulating verbally. Engaging in wholehearted, sappy romance is something you struggle with and perhaps something you even feel embarrassed by.

You're not particularly avoidant of commitment, but the daunting idea of spending your life with someone scares you, even though it's something you truly want. Whether that be in lifestyle, viewpoint, or life experiences - you find catharsis in the (maybe misguided) belief that you could always go back to being friends and find yourself feeling very convinced of it. Having something aside from love tethering you brings you assurance, because for better or for worse - you aren't sure if love will be enough. Being Miss Bodyguard to Rafayel is something you like - as it feels more tangible a role than lover. It might even become a sore point in your relationship depending on how you go about it.

For Rafayel stans, a level of relatability and Rafayel's clever way of engaging your emotions and being considerate towards your expression is important to you. You might have a strong sense or fear of grounded reality and feel a slight envy towards Rafayel's freedom of expression even at his most frivolous or when you know he's acting. There's a also strong chance you are queer and a switch.

XAVIER

For Xavier stans, I think the poll is split evenly down the middle who like characters like him historically and people who were completely blindsided by their feelings for him. You might have a tendency towards anxiety and/or overthinking.

You are likely someone who tends to bottle up their emotions and resentment and may have a tendency to take things personally even if they are not directed at you specifically. It's likely you're capable and tenacious person in your career but struggle with recognizing your emotional needs.

The main driving point for you and Xavier is his loyalty. Above both devotion and obsession - you're drawn to the assured quality of his emotions that seems to reach past something tangible, but never fully undermines your capability. You may take preference to Xavier to Caleb explicitly for this reason.

It's likely you also enjoy the comfortable, natural element to Xaviers romance. A bluntness followed with irrefutable proof of affection is comforting - as it doesn't feel forced and does not need to be asked for. It may be that you're somewhat prone to feeling like partners should be able to read your mind, and find yourself harboring some resentment when they cannot. This may be especially true as you see yourself as being less of a 'needy' partner and find that blow especially tough.

You could have had the type of childhood that required a lot of sacrifice. Not necessarily a big, traumatic incident but a small series of sacrifices that accumulated over a lifetime that influence your way of thinking in relationships. You're somewhat adverse to the feeling of needing someone because of how you've developed your autonomy. Being the one to 'chase' might be something you avoid, or something you'd prefer to be relieved of after doing it most of your life in other areas. I think there's a strong overlap between Xavier fans and middle children / only children.

As a LI, Xavier will always have you and being with you, at the forefront of his priorities, almost to the point of absurdity but without feeling intentional. There's an ease and effortless that comforts you - as if love is the one thing you think it'd be nice not to work hard at. He's the love interest that most strongly expresses his monopoly over you regardless of consequence and morals.

You may be reluctant to admit that you like these things and may feel a sense of guilt over how much you indulge or enable his desire to monopolize you so completely. Even though you know logically it's not anything bad. You may also have a tendency to get easily attached to people who show you genuine kindness even when it's to your own detriment. It's surprisingly easy for small acts of kindness and relief tend to move you more deeply then anything.

For Xavier stans, the fact he prioritizes you without second guessing himself makes it difficult for you to second-guess him either. Struggling to reconcile your needs, you appreciate that Xavier meets them silently on his own and often subtlety that protects your pride. That and his ability to do it all without making it seem like a labor. Comforted by his certainty that does not require you to express your own vulnerability often.

ZAYNE

For Zayne stans - it's perhaps undeniable that one of the main draws of his character is the sort of perfection and stability he provides to your life. He upholds a gentle, considerate demeanor while being able to make choices and decisions without hesitating. It's likely that he is a character type that's shown up in your history at some other time, though in respect to what specific aspect might vary.

You are likely someone who struggles with a sense of loneliness, regardless of how many people you have in your immediate circle and in your life. It's not from a lacking gratitude, but rather - a tendency to never quite show your hand when it comes to intimate relationships. You might be someone who has had to learn to navigate social situations as a means of survival - choosing to front with many different masks to accommodate for each group. You often have a hyper-vigilance towards you and a sensitive intuition about people.

While there is the assumption (and some merit in that assumption) that most Zayne mains are attracted to his sense of responsibility - it's more likely what you're attracted to the feeling of acceptance Zayne offers. What that acceptance is of specifically may vary, whether it be an acceptance of your neediness or of your childishness or just your general authentic self. Beyond simple honesty, it's the understanding that your presence is wanted regardless of what it looks like.

You may have had a childhood that came with high expectations of you and a pressure to behave/perform that you found difficult to withstand. As an adult, you may carry these expectations still and critique yourself harshly when you are unable to meet them. It makes the blow feel especially harsh when you fail at something.

Additionally, it's possible you have a strained relationship with authority figures in your life. Whether it be parentification, general incompetence, or neglect - some circumstances have given you a certain pessimism and a sustained yet strong belief that relying on another person is not possible, though you long to do so.

It's likely that the trust and rapport Zayne provides innately is the biggest comfort you receive from his character. Not only is he trustworthy in the literal sense, but he's consistent in proving himself with actions and emotionally trustworthy without fail.

You may also see and recognize Zayne's struggles within yourself, and are attracted to the idea of partnership with him because the relationship would be on equal footing. You may have had past relationships where you accepted less then you deserved as a result of mentioned loneliness and need for companionship. You might find yourself attracting partners who need to be taken care over partners with their own autonomy as you find it hard to relinquish control despite your desire to do just that.

For Zayne stans, rather than the surface level need for stability - you are attracted to the feeling true partnership in his romance. A person that is both dependable, capable and understanding. Zayne speaks to the desire you have for a true companion - not necessarily out of monopoly, but a deep and answer to an almost cosmic loneliness from years of struggling all on your own.

SYLUS

For Sylus stans, it's likely true that you were at least somewhat attracted to Sylus' character on the surface - even before developing a more refined understanding of his character. You might have a preference of villains or other types of characters with an outcast quality to them or some kind of habitual vigilantism.

You enjoy, generally, being the exception to the rule when it comes to characters you like. Rather then a character who tends to form relationships and connections easily - you prefer being the person 'chosen' in a matter of speaking. You may have a history with being socially outcast / abrasive and find yourself less drawn to characters who are too expressly friendly with everyone, though you yourself tend to be amiable.

You likely have a strong sense of identity perhaps at the price of your social life and capital, and a strong commitment to authenticity that comes at the cost of receiving ire from people you consider friends and foes alike. As a result, you also find yourself somewhat overly forgiving and take betrayal extremely personally as deep intimate relationships are difficult to form as few people also fit the criteria of your values. You might be prone to sensitivity and feelings of hurt, while being almost too lenient with those you love and care for as a result.

The initial enemies-to-lovers part of Sylus' romance may appeal to you, but more then that its the gradual deepening of the relationship that you find classically romantic. As opposed to being seen at your worst, its knowing that Sylus is capable of always seeing exactly who you are no matter how you may appear in front of him that calls to you most. Not only that but loving you for it.

You have a history of being misunderstood or having your intentions misconstrued as a result of how you choose to navigate the world while staying true to your values. Sylus demonstrating continuously that no matter the circumstances, he understands you with ease is a large part of his appeal. In addition - you may be someone who struggles to express their emotions verbally without feeling a sense of embarrassment.

You have a tendency to use actions or gifts or other more tangible means to show your love - but directness tends to weaken your resolve and feels especially charming when being pursued romantically. Sylus being able to communicate his emotions to you concisely and without irony - as well without needing your interpretation speaks to you. Rather then needing to read his intentions, you can trust in his honesty and in his commitment. Of course this is backed-up with actions, but more than anything - you need to be assured verbally and directly.

You might've struggled with having a guardian (perhaps specifically a mother figure) that was passive aggressive. You have a tendency towards anxiety and catastrophizing under duress - and as a result find Sylus' consistent calmness appealing even in moments it should bother you to see him act that way. His assuredness feels almost medicinal in that sense.

For Sylus stans, its not only his sense of devotion but the extent of it - the ways in which he commits to understanding you, honoring your choices, and making the effort to do it continually and without expectation. His romance provides a specific kind of clarity and has a more soothing quality, someone that assures you that you can make it out of anything unscathed - no matter how big or small.

CALEB

For Caleb stans, some of your preferences and your reasoning will depend on which view you choose to see the relationship that Caleb and MC shares. Regardless though, there's a strong likelihood that the type of character Caleb is, is one you have somewhere else in your history for one reason or another.

There is a distinct feeling of wish fulfillment when it comes to your view or interest in Caleb as a love interest - and there might even be a distinct degree of separation between your interest in him and how much you view MC to be yourself as a result of the nature of his romance.

It's possible you have a strong sense of detachment or compartmentalization when it comes to your own emotions. Or find them so intense at times it gets difficult to hold relationships comfortably. As well as a strong feeling of emotional invulnerability that can seem ironic when considering Caleb as a love interest. However, it's explicitly the exclusivity and the appeal that Caleb holds - the 'special' foundation of his relationship that draws you in

Regardless of which interpretation of the game you choose, there's no doubt that Caleb is a character that builds a lifetime of rapport in his romance that influences his level of fierce protectiveness. It's likely you had a difficult childhood and home life - one that forced you to grow up sooner and made your youth primarily focused on escaping. It's possible you felt both much older then your peers while also feeling emotionally stunted when it came to your romantic relationships as an adult.

It's likely you find navigating vulnerability challenging - either because you're concerned with being too much when expressing your emotions sincerely, or because the very thought of doing so is rather foreign in general. Regardless on which side of the coin you fall on, you take comfort in the act of being loved almost forcibly.

Difficult to anger, quick to forgive, and always overwhelmingly willing to coddle even your smallest incidents - Caleb's romance provides a love that demands nothing of you in any capacity and exists as a sounding board for your emotions. You may be the type of person who struggles deeply to care for themselves even at their most healed.

It's possible you prefer love to be treated as an avenue of destiny and inevitability, something infallible and absolute and unchanging. You might be a bit of a romantic or a person with a strong inclination towards daydreaming, but you find this part of yourself in earnest a bit difficult to face with honesty. There's perhaps nothing so difficult as the admittance you want to be loved so much, though it's a theme that appears repeatedly in your life.

For Caleb stans, the main draw is in a way the choicelessness of the affection he shows. There's an almost overbearing quality to his love that makes it inescapable - and this both serves you and reassures you that there is no right or wrong way to make him leave. Caleb might exist more than anything as an answer to abandonment wounds in your adolescence, a hero even at his worst.

[elwenyere]

I've been reflecting on the parallels between 1.07 and 2.09 (as visualized in this beautiful GIF set) and what I take away from the placement of these scenes in the overall structure of the show: specifically the way both of them occur right after Cassian has taken part in one of the big set pieces for resistance (the raid on Aldhani and the massacre on Ghorman).

Echoed in the conversations with Maarva and Bix are two recurring desires for Cassian: (1) he wants to be able to choose how when and how he leaves, and (2) he wants to reaffirm to himself that he has everything he needs to take care of the people closest to him. On the level of the psychodrama/individual-character origin story, I can see how both of these responses are entangled with what happened to him as a child on Kenari, and then again when he's incarcerated after Clem's death (having his choices taken away by a force larger than him and thus being unable to protect his family). On the level of Andor's meta-narratives about what organized resistance requires, I can see how both of these desires speak to difficulties in navigating between individual and collective social consciousness (we have to fight knowing we will not see the end of the fight, and we do that because we recognize we need each other to be free, and no one's free until everyone is).

I think there are a number of ways to read what claims the show is making by staging a recurrence of 1.07's "I'm walking backwards into my narrative; I was trying to walk out" structure in 2.09, and YMMV on which you find most satisfying: (1) trauma is necessarily repetitive and cyclical; (2) the commitment to collective struggle is not a one-time decision but rather must be remade continually; and/or (3) it's vital to the mode of resistance Cassian embodies that he never achieves total certainty - not only because, historically, people working for justice never know in the moment whether what they're doing is going to work, but also because, diegetically, his doubt will be as important to his resistance work as his conviction.

With regard to claim (1), I think it's really interesting that in 2.09, the same episode where Cassian is expressing his intention to be done with Luthen and Draven and to leave to Rebellion, he describes himself to Mon as one of the last "survivors of the raid on Aldhani." He doesn't say "we pulled off the Aldhani heist" or "we were on the Aldhani crew together"; he frames himself as someone who survives larger actions when other people don't. There's an echo there to how he describes himself as "one of fifty survivors" at Mimban and the way Maarva describes him as the sole survivor from Kenari - of the look on his face when Melshi asks him how many men he thinks made it out of Narkina and Cassian says "not enough."

And for me it's that learned link between being subsumed by a larger unit (the family, the prison, the militia, the Rebel Alliance) and being prevented from doing something individually very consequential (like going back in time to save Kerri or Maarva or Brasso) that forms the hinge connecting the interiority of explanation (1) to the more structural and ideological levels of (2) and (3). Cassian is a character who's had major choices about how to live his life taken away from him, both in ways that are idiosyncratic to his own trajectory and in ways he shares with a huge number of people living under fascism; and Andor demonstrates how embracing the collective struggle against the latter involves a renegotiation of the need for individual agency sharpened by the former. For me, a central effect of the show's decision to sustain the tension between those desires rather than resolving it is the suggestion that both qualities (Cassian's willingness to give his all in pursuit of collective liberation and his value for individual autonomy) end up being crucial to the decisions he makes in Rogue One. Without his commitment to the cause, he would never have been in the position to help get news to Yavin about the Death Star plans. Without his need to exercise his own judgment and make/allow for autonomous choices, he wouldn't have been ready to buck the chain of command and help lead Rogue One to Scarif. In other words, I think it's possible to read Cassian's behavior in arc three of season two both as a personal trauma response and also as another stage of a dialectical, always-unfinished struggle to navigate the poles of individual agency and collective action. Andor tells a story about how all the things Cassian gathers along the way - everything he already feels and knows, as Maarva says via Brasso - prepare him to be a force for good, including the impulse to set aside more abstract objectives to refocus on the need to protect the person in front of him.

[satsugacafe]

how will these men react if their s/o got into accident and lost their memories?

ANW, DON'T FORGET TO TAKE A REST!! i love your writing sm, it brings joyous ❤️

A/N: Ooof! This was such a sad scenario 😭

They would be shattered inside but show their love through quiet consistency. They wouldn’t pressure you to remember, instead staying nearby, offering gentle support, silently hoping you'd remember them someday.

— Shunsui, Jushiro, Byakuya, Uryu, Starrk

They’d accept your memory loss as a challenge, and definitely determined to make you fall for them all over again. The level of patience they would have to recreate memories with you from the ground up would never be a problem, no matter how long it takes.

— Ichigo, Renji, Hisagi, Shinji, Kisuke, Ryuken, Gin

These guys wouldn’t handle it well emotionally. They’d fluctuate between denial, frustration, aggression (not to you) and obsession. Their behaviour might become intense or unbalanced because they can't bear losing your connection.

— Kenpachi, Bazz-B, Grimmjow

At first, they’d appear calm and composed, possibly even distant. But this detachment is just armour—they’d be hurting, and they'd secretly monitor you, ensuring your safety from afar while trying to find a solution quietly.

— Aizen, Ulquiorra, Yhwach, Jugram, Askin, Kira, Toshiro

[kittyk4att]

But that’s what so frustrating with this. What is that personality trait conveyed by latte picture taking? Is it the woman who make a bid for attention/connection on social media the way the current internet culture taught her how? Is it the woman who appreciates the piece of temporary art a barista created with the milk foam and wants to keep of trace of it? Is it the woman who thinks the milk and the coffee are interacting in an interesting way that could be the basis for a cool design/painting later on? Or is it the woman taking that picture for her own reasons that doesn’t deserve to be judged for that by a person who doesn’t even bother to try and know her before passing judgment?

(Yeah, I know it’s the first one, but they still lump all the others in there with her. And guess what? That first woman doesn’t deserve to be judged either. Don’t act like knowing how to connect in this day and age is simple for everyone. Learn to know a person before deciding they’re shallow, ffs)

Men - and people in general - that despise women based on innocuous surface-level actions like that do so because they think women are some sort of hive-minded creatures that do things for the same reason every single time. They don’t think of us as people with distinct personalities, otherwise they would actually cite those personality traits as turn-offs instead of a list of morally neutral details.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being turned off by shallow women, for example, but recognize that’s what’s going on and stop dismissing women based on morally-neutral actions tv taught you are sure-fire signs of shallowness in all women ever. Or stop complaining you can’t find a girlfriend when you’re obviously not interested in getting to know any woman. It’s a you problem, buddy.

(I’m not targeting pansexual-spaceman specifically, that’s a take many, many people have had - me included - and maybe that’s part of what’s wrong with the world nowadays, not just a certain type of men)

The longer I exist as a loudly proudly gay man the more I think that cishet men aren't actually attracted to women.

[comatosebunny09]

The way you write Sylus…so accurate like wth 😍 I love how you’re exploring him! Just putting this idea out there, simply because I love this trope (and if it inspires you even better) but the amnesia trope would hit so hard with Sylus x reader… but imagine it’s Sylus who forgets about her for a wild few moments…days or months 👀 and yet remembers ms.hunter just fine 😭 i mean the angst….im sorry but i cannot…but i wanna think about it because ow

Kieran and Luke really trying to remind Sylus that reader is his right hand, that they’re super important to him, but Sylus can’t quite grasp the connection…not that he doesn’t feel anything 👀 oh he feels something. But it’s confusing because how could he not remember someone as beautiful as you, can’t quite grasp how he could forget someone like you…

He finds familiarly in ms.hunter…of course he would, how could he not you think, so you spiral more, perhaps even accept this is how it was supposed to be, in fact it might be better that way, maybe it’s what you deserve for ever thinking he could be yours or would like you the same…

You try help him remember, with the help of Luke and Kieran, but it’s always surface level, you feel embarrassed sharing those small moments that meant more to you, what if had misread them, you don’t want to mislead Sylus, you never knew his true feelings, besides there’s ms.hunter too…

He laughs with her, remembers her, because of there shared history…you never could have come between that, this just proves it’s…you’re forgettable, only a small part in his story in the grand scheme of things, your storyline in his life might have run it’s course now…

…so maybe you leave, maybe you resign. Sylus doesn’t understand, it hurts, his heart, his body…you telling him you’re leaving is painful to him, but you’re just a loyal employee right? He shouldn’t stop you from moving on if you wish…even if every part of him wants to stop you…but it’s the right thing to do, being a good boss, maybe he’s different now he can’t remember too, shouldn’t force you to stay…

But he’s confused because ms.hunter has told him you were special to him, he trusts ms.hunter, doesn’t believe she would mislead him, but maybe she got it wrong, maybe you are special to him but it’s not reciprocated so even if every bone in his body wants to beg you to stay, he doesn’t stop you…

So you leave…

Maybe months pass, maybe it’s been a year…does Sylus end up remembering? Maybe comes searching for you…maybe he never does

💔💔

You are so big-brained for this, honeybun.

This is giving The Vow, minus them being married. But damn it all, retrograde amnesia has impeccable timing.

Right when you and Sylus started to reach a pivotal point in your partnership—your relationship—he lost any recollection of you.

You’re already grieving. Already beating yourself up. The person who’s been almost invincible to you went down, and you couldn’t be there to shield him. There’s a glimmer of hope when he cracks his eyes open after days of being unconscious.

You’re holding his hand, knelt at his bedside, tears brimming in your eyes, a watery smile on your face.

He’s a little groggy, voice smoky in his throat, and you help him sit up against his headboard. He studies the faces around the room—Luke, Kieran, Ms. Hunter. But when his gaze swivels back around to you, he looks confused. It’s like he’s looking right through you rather than at you.

He snatches his hand away from yours. Who the hell are you, and how did you get into his house? His base?

The room is rife with tension. Everyone feels the shift in the atmosphere.

“Who are you?” Sylus asks, halfway vexed.

You’re stricken with something cold. You laugh anxiously, figuring he’s playing a cruel joke. “Come on, boss-man. Don’t play games like that with me. Not now.”

He couldn’t be more serious. He stares at you impassively, not a lick of humor on his face.

The false amusement drops from your features. Your stomach lurches.

Everyone springs into action, trying to lighten the mood. Still thinking he’s playing a sick, cruel joke.

“C’mon, boss! You know her! She’s your right hand!” says Luke, though his voice cracks the slightest bit as if he’s also disbelieving that this is all just a terrible nightmare.

“Yeah! She’s been with you for years!” chimes in Kieran. The distress in his voice is also noticeable.

Emcee smiles nervously, doing her best to lighten the load. She smooths a shaky hand down your rigid back to soothe you before taking hold of Sylus’ hand between her smaller ones, directing his attention to her. He doesn’t snatch away this time, gaze softening when it descends on her.

“Sylus. Do you…remember anything?”

He gazes at his lap for a moment, pensive. “I recognize you, sweetie. The twins. But this woman…” His eyes flit to you. And where their intensity would normally light a fire in your belly, it turns your blood to ice. “I haven’t the foggiest who she is.”

The four of you spend the next few months trying to get him to remember you thereafter. But it’s of no use.

He tries. He really does. He remembers vague things before his concussion. Feels like he should be more familiar with you, given your history as explained by the twins. To him, you’re like a specter. Someone who’s there, but not really.

You start to spiral, too. You still stick by his side, stepping in where you can. But you’re still a foreign concept to him, given he’s used to working alone. He gets snappy with you a few times, but you still persevere in hopes that maybe someday, he’ll remember.

You get so desperate for him to remember, you try everything. You take him to places where small sparks of your relationship started to flicker, long before your feelings were revealed. You talk about minute things that could hopefully jog his memory. It’s embarrassing to you, to house such small, seemingly insignificant things in your heart about him. But you’ll do anything to get the Sylus who started to show a glimmer of passion towards you back.

You even let the twins convince you to kiss him. To reenact the catalyst of your relationship. And you do, one day in his office when he’s unassuming. You pour everything into the union of your mouths. When you pull away, he looks shocked, and for a moment, you think maybe you’ve reignited something. But he gives you that blank stare again after asking, “What was that for,” and you’re beginning to lose hope.

Eventually, he feels so terrible for not remembering you that he makes love to you out of pity. He might not know who you are, but everyone says he should. And he surprisingly feels terrible, watching you run yourself ragged, trying to get him to remember you.

At some point, the grief is too much to bear. He might never get his memories back. He won’t ever look at you the same, and it fucking hurts. So, you run away.

Everyone advises you against it. Everyone fights for you to stay, Emcee being the most vehement about it. You loved him through it all once. She’s sure you can do it again. She’s convinced you can capture his heart all over again.

But you’re not. The way he looks at you now can’t compare to how he looks at his precious dove. He humors you, yes. But he recalls the feelings he has for Emcee as strongly as he does the previous night. To him, you’re like an annoying gnat buzzing around that he just…tolerates.

You don’t want to complicate things more than already have been. So you leave. After six months of fighting for a place back at his side, you leave. And maybe you’re a coward for jumping ship. Maybe he’ll remember once you’re long gone, and maybe he’ll do everything to find you.

For now, the burden of a heavy heart is too much to shoulder. It’s almost as bad as the beginning of your relationship when you’d wordlessly pined for him while he was oblivious to your affections.

Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe he was meant to forget you all along. You should’ve never tried to meddle with fate to begin with.

[madzilla84]

Emmrich and ambition

Something I don’t see talked about much (although I could have missed it) is Emmrich’s ambitiousness. He’s not just interested in the Fade, he’s the foremost expert in the world. He doesn’t just want to be a Mourn Watcher, he wants to reach the highest possible rank it’s possible for a Watcher to achieve (lichdom). (Obviously there are multiple positive and negative motivations for him to consider lichdom, but his ambitiousness is definitely part of it). 

(under the read more to save your dash)

There’s a conversation he has with Harding where she asks him what he would have done if he wasn’t a Watcher, and he thinks about it and eventually says he’d have been a botanist. But not just *A* botanist, noodling around in his greenhouse - he specifically says, “one of the great botanists”. It isn’t enough to just be a botanist, he has to be the best at it.

I’m not at all saying this as a negative thing, fwiw - very often this sort of ambition can come with a sort of big-headedness, especially when one is at the top of one’s field, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Emmrich (the majority of the time, I’m sure he has his moments like most experts do). Rather, it spurs him on to greater heights and inspires him to share that passion with others. But that drive to Be The Best is definitely there.

It could explain why he was friends with Johanna - on the surface, it does seem a bit out-of-character considering her cruelty, unless you also consider her brilliance. They were on each other’s level academically, and he knew she could help him achieve (and she knew the same about him). I’ve no doubt her ambition was something he particularly admired … maybe *too* much, by his own recognition. Maybe it even spurred on his own.

I also raised an eyebrow when I chose Dorian for Archon and got a little ‘Emmrich approves’ pop up. While you could say it’s just because he likes the idea of a fellow necromancer being in charge - part of ambition is taking action to achieve your goals, and Dorian’s goals are definitely things Emmrich would agree with, even if he might not be in total agreement with his methods (which he might be! We don’t really know, he doesn’t say that much about it). So he’d probably, y’know, admire the conviction and determination if nothing else?

It’s likely something he also admires in Rook, whether romanced or not. Rook is the only person really in the world who is stepping up to tackle this issue, and yes they were already involved but they’re still doing it! It’s maybe also part of why he joins the Veilguard (all pretty ambitious people/the best in their respective fields).

I don’t really have a point here, I just wanted to ramble about an aspect of his personality I don’t see mentioned/explored all that much. Now he’s started seeing the world I’m sure he would like to continue doing that (and iirc his writer said essentially the same thing), but I’m sure he would also be involved in writing the inevitable books about what happened, wanting to be recognised for being part of it all, because - and we're getting into esoteric Waffle Territory here - if you dig into it his ambitiousness is likely all tied up with his fear of death, or perhaps more accurately, of being forgotten. Or perhaps even more accurately, of being left behind. By the world. Like he was by his parents. 

IT’S ALL CONNECTED!!

[invisiblemelonmoose]

My apologies, I definitely framed that wrong. Sugar-free, just like gluten-free, absolutely does have a nutritional value to those who actually need it. (I also did momentarily forget that diabetics and others with similar issues rely on that, so double apology to my diabetic friends. It's been a while since I've have had to bake with a sugar substitute.)

What I intended to mean was that, people who use "sugar-free" to mean "go hog wild and eat without consequences even though you're dieting" don't realize that those chemicals will still be treated like sugar in their body not in the glucose sense, but in the your body is still use it and convert it into fat eventually. It's not some sort of magical panacea for their sugar habit and can in fact be worse (depending on the particular substitute) if basically consumed in the same way as sugar.

People will claim that brown sugar is healthier that regular white sugar, which is not true at all. It's molasses + regular sugar that achieves a higher level of sweetness that the same amount of regular sugar. Monkfruit, Splenda, and other artificial sweeteners not only reduce the amount you have to add in compared to regular sugar, but have the added benefit of not giving glucose spikes.

Tbh, while I'm not particularly educated in "fat-free" foods, I wouldn't be surprised if there were other health benefits to that as well that aren't just "dieting".

The thing with health washing and fad diets is they aren't inherently bad. On the one hand, they make these foods more easily available to the people who need them as well as bring awareness to those needs in the first place. There's a restaurant connected to a place I used to work that specialized in healthy, organic, allergen free food. Working with them closely made me realize the extent foods specificall labeled without allergens needed to be handled. I may have never really learned to the extent that I did without that experience. Your average person definitely does not.

I would say that the real problem lies in the marketing because obviously these businesses need to make money in order to continue what they're doing. On the other, by marketing them as health foods specifically (but using health by the vaguest of definitions), fad dieters will try then and may get mad they didn't loose 15 lbs in 2 weeks and then blame that lable on false marketing.

All of that to say, I'm very sorry part of my last post conveyed the wrong thing (and was in fact antithetical to OPs point). Food labels are very confusing and at time entirely misleading, but not in the ways we think.

it is weird that celiac stuff has become part of the 'culture war'. because it's literally just a medical thing.... I get super anemic unless I cut a certain protein out of my diet, because it bulldozes the villi in my intestines. but if I post about it, right-wingers send me gore images. I guess you can't expect shitty people to be logical, but I've even heard lefty people make fun of gluten stuff, and it's like why are you mad about this??? why are you pissed off that I'm eating bread that doesn't taste as good so that I can have blood in my body? it's so morally neutral.

[makeitworse]

VICE

contains: dark themes. fem reader x junho. crushing on ur older brother figure. age gap. taboo / weird dynamic. suggestive. 18+

notes: requested. drabble / indent format :p

growing up, jun-ho was the boy next door. your neighbour’s kind-eyed, gentle voiced son. the youngest in his family, yet far older than you. he was supposed to just stay that.

your families were close; his mother, ms. park, often looked after you when your parents worked late hours. eventually that became routine— you had a seat saved at their dinner table each night. ms. park would fix you up lunch for the next day. there were even chores delegated to you.

jun-ho was someone you admired and trusted, and yet he always seemed just out of reach. there’d be nights after dinner where you were both curled up on the couch, stifling your laughter at some old classic playing on the tv— his mother having long gone to bed.

he’d turn to you with jokes, and you’d swat his shoulder with barely contained giggles. he’d never hold your gaze for more than a second. he’d let you touch him, but after he would inch away on the couch. you always noticed, of course. and you never got used to how it stung each time.

your ages were on opposite ends of the term “teenager”. you considered yourself grown, though— mentally at his level. it’s why you always challenged him. why you’d intentionally brush past him just to feel him freeze up. you always resisted the impulse to ask what his problem was.

you meet again later in life. since his family moved away, you hadn’t heard anything from jun-ho. it’s not like he was going to maintain a connection with a girl much younger than him anyways, when he was basically an adult— you see that, now that you’re grown too.

it’s like he never left— you clicked almost instantly, as if you grew up side-by-side, not knowing each other in intervals. he’s always seen you as part of his extended family. even now, he feels an obligation to protect you. and it makes his evolving feelings deeply unsettling to him.

despite your maturity, he’s finding it difficult to treat you like an equal. it irritates you that he’s still seeing just that “kid next door” he’d babysit on occasion. you try to balance showing him that you’re grown while reminding him that you’re not actually family.

and he knows this. you’re not related, but the history, the age gap— it’s an unspoken taboo. he was raised to respect you, not desire. his mother would disapprove. so would your parents. and that’s not out of law or morality; it just didn’t feel right.

in terms of your dynamic, jun-ho holds the emotional upper hand— he’s older, more experienced, used to being the one in control. you’re drawn to his discipline, but you tend to butt heads over your independence. you challenge his way of thinking. you make him second guess what he thought was fact.

tension builds unmistakably in every moment you spend together. quiet dinners, invading personal space, brushing touches and lingering gazes. once, you’d both had far too much to drink, and a there was a near-kiss incident. both of you pretended it didn’t happen.

yet, it very much did, and that tension festered in every following interaction. eventually, jun-ho gives in. he’s tired of running circles in his brain, justifying it, berating himself for considering it— rinse repeat.

your first true kiss is slow, hesitant. it happened one evening in his apartment. jun-ho had pulled you to him by the wrist without words, and taken your lips with his. it was deeply charged with unsaid words— and it was over as soon as it started. you both pulled away at the same time.

intimacy progressed slow and as sure as you were born. kisses were brief, hands never stayed long enough for the warmth to last. his every action was shadowed by doubt. jun-ho’s torn between desire and duty— wanting you and hating himself for it. you deserved someone your own age, someone you had genuine feelings for, not just some coming-of-age awakening.

your physical relationship remained stop-start— guilt on his behalf, bravery on yours. that sweet moment he finally touched you, it’s with the reverence of a man cursing every second of it. jun-ho’s hands were steady, practiced, but his breath bated. you felt like a kid again with how he could barely keep his eyes on you.

he whispered your name like a prayer and a warning— eyes dark with want and guilt, his forehead resting against yours as if proximity might absolve him. he murmured that he shouldn’t, but he does. it all floods to the surface. it’s not just lust, it’s surrender. the man beneath the badge.

jun-ho felt two clashing forces: what feels wrong and what feels real— because with you, he feels seen in a way no one else manages. he’s deeply protective of that, it borders on possessive— but he’s tactful at justifying it with logic and care.

because despite it all— he doesn’t want to see you with anyone else. he knows there’s no one else who can look after you how he can.

idk how i feel ab the quality of this LMFAO

tags: @lightinbug @sherrayyyyy @ferrarifinnick @namsgyu @riddlerloveb0t @loveesiren @ttturnitup @bcfcpsh @avsarchivez @frontwomann

[julietcpulet]

The Verdigris Sisters and Romance

This is something I thought of when another poster commented about Lihaku and Pairin and the progression of their relationship. It made me think about the four women of the Verdigirs house potentially representing 4 different kinds of love and romance. Each is supposed to show different depths of what love can look like, or lack of for that matter, and the choices made to lead in that direction. Basically my thoughts are: Meimei - unrequited love, Pairin - casual love, Joka - bitter love and Maomao - true love. I’ll explain why for each one below. (Spoilers under the cut)

Meimei - She represents unrequited love or remaining single against one’s wishes. Although it can be seen that Meimei is romantic and has felt love, her feelings go unmet. She expresses a desire to be bought out of the Verdigris House but isn’t and we even have some idea that she wished Lakan had bought her out but knew that wasn’t much of a possibility. Even when she is finally taken it’s because of her skills at Go, not a romantic notion. So her representation is that of a woman who remains single and fulfills other ambitions but likely against what her heart truly wishes.

Pairin - She represents casual love or remaining single because she’s unable to accept love that’s already there. This one may be controversial due to how some view her and Lihaku’s relationship. However, I’ve never seen it as particularly “romantic”. We value his devotion to her because she’s the only one in his eyes, but that’s not reciprocated from her direction. She still acts as if she’s waiting for a prince even though Lihaku adores her only and has spent years coming to see her. To me Pairin’s affection for Lihaku isn’t love, it’s casual affection of convenience, wanting to keep Lihaku around for what he gives her without equal reciprocation. In the light novel it’s been 6+ years and yet there has been no movement past this casual state of their relationship. We see Lihaku’s love as pure because he’s not with anyone else but Pairin is not shown to give the same level of affection. People will claim it’s due to her life as a courtesan but as Maomao says she only has to take costumers occasionally but instead takes customers because she wants to and is, to put it frankly, a sex addict. This shows that while Pairin says she wants a white knight to come and take her away, she’s too addicted to her current lifestyle and the fantasy she’s created to ever leave. As it’s been made clear she has enough money to leave the Verdigris House and the madam would even let her go to a suitor for half the price if it was her wish, yet she stays. As such I feel it shows she an Lihaku are forever in this “casual” place where one wants more but Pairin will remain single because of unrealistic expectations and not being honest that she may just like being a courtesan and having multiple sexual partners too much.

Joka - She represents bitter love or being single because of unwillingness to move past hurts and form actual relationships. It’s clear from interactions with Maomao and how she’s described as a courtesan that Joka is a difficult person, harsh and critical, who has trust issues. She throws barbs at Maomao about being a whore’s daughter and is almost a copy of the miserly madam. Instead of being willing to see how Maomao is growing she insults her and says she cannot have a normal romance but must be like Joka herself, rejecting people. It’s suggested that she will one day be the one to take over the Verdigris House as well, showing that because she cannot learn how to move past her own problems she will stay in the same cycle of bitterness collecting only what’s valuable to her which has become money.

Maomao - She represents true love or love that is fulfilled through growing friendship, understanding and romantic connection. While Maomao isn’t perfect and neither is her past she hasn’t let that be a deterrent to creating meaningful relationships with others, namely Jinshi. Even though she’s immensely skeptical and shrugs off or denies the possibility he could love her because of who she is and her own devaluation of herself, she comes to realize he does want her and this realization leads to communication. This willingness to open up to possibility, to friendship, to romantic love is where Maomao differs from her sisters. As all of them have gone unfulfilled in romance not just because they’re courtesans but also because they make choices that can close them off from others. While Maomao has this tendency due in part to her sisters upbringing, she’s learning to actively go against it and pursue what’s between her and Jinshi. Even when she’s doubtful he will want what she has to give because she sees her own feelings as “lukewarm” compared to his deeper ones she pushes forward anyway and we know that Jinshi doesn’t devalue her reciprocation at all. To this end she exemplifies the chance at true love.

This is all just speculation on my part, I’m not sure if the author intended any such correlation or not it’s just what I picked up from seeing the women’s stories unfold and how they’re each on these particular paths (or lack there of).

[taylorklosscomeout138]

Maybe that's because yalls side of things view everything so painfully surface level with the forced removal of the ever present layer of Kaylor that still persists in 2025.

Let's get into this rundown of evidence and bare with me because there is ALOT...

If you dove even slightly deeper you would have figured out that the poster isn't a random person, she is Ruby Rose's ex girlfriend and she deliberately drew attention to the part where Karlie is shown by cutting the original clip right after, just to proceed to like and reply to every comment about Karlie and Kaylor lore.... yeah in the big year of 2025

It's almost like Kaylor isn't a thing of the past.

You would have also found that this is Harley the poster of the July 4th vid, Ruby Rose, Cara, Gigi, and Taylor is laying across them. Like Taylor clearly knew Harley who again has proven to be a KAYLOR herself.

But that's not all. Because you would have also discovered that Harley implied numerous times that she was not allowed to release this footage till now because she signed an NDA and had just been given permission to post it, including her responding to myself about the NDA.

Which based on her Kaylor activity it becomes very clear that Taylor gave the green light AND had her specifically cut it off after Karlie is shown.

How do we know this for sure? Because this morning Harley deleted her video of the second half of the footage, which LOUDLY indicates she was not allowed to release any more of the video than she originally did. The second half shows Karlie's beard with his alleged actual boyfriend Mikey Hess. This is likely the reason she had to take it down.

Also this is her implying that the timing was intentional

So let's look deeper into this, because it all revolves around KARma.

So this 4th of July insider clip was posted yesterday on the 13th, let's keep in mind that party took place during the Karma era.

Well at the same time that these clips were being released what was TN up to? Fueling that Karma is real and posting about Karma

They also posted within this "you can't spell Cats without TS" which is reminiscent of "you can't spell awesome without ME" from the Lover era... I think this callback is extremely intentional because get this...

In the KARma MV during the hourglass scene, the outfit Taylor is wearing looks exactly like Taylor's 2019 AMAs outfit which was around the failed Lover era coming out.

I believe this scene implies that the time has been ticking between the 2019 AMAs and the 2025 AMAs. Because there is a very obvious connection between this year's AMAs and the Karma MV. They both will have premiered on May 26th....

So to bring it back to the Karma era 4th of July video, it makes perfect sense that it would be planned to be released on the 13th, 13 days before the AMAs which has direct correlation to Karma no matter what you believe and what way you look at it. It is irrefutably connected.

It is also rumoured that Taylor will make an album announcement at the AMAs and some of my friends have previously speculated before Harley even posted that that Taylor would release this album on July 4th. Which would make even more sense if true as to why we got a July 4th video from the Karma era.

I also think considering how Taylor released Speak Now TV around July 9th because of the Last Kiss lyric that it would make sense for her to release Reputation TV July 4th because of the Endgame lyric.

In which I cannot stress this enough, IN the video Harley posted we see both ED SHEERAN and KARLIE KLOSS at this 4th of July party and it can generally be inferred that Endgame lyric is written about the exact same party, hence Ed featuring on it.

So if you ask me none of this is a reach or Kaylor lore of the past, this is literally all present activities. In which I want to remind everyone that it has always been obvious KARma was for KARlie but Taylor doubled down and made it more obvious in the actual Karma MV.

Because in her Vogue 73 questions interview Taylor says her favorite song lyric ever is "I had a dream there were clouds in my coffee" from You're So Vain by Carly Simon, this is right before she proceeds to go outside and tell a man to take his wife to Big Sur for their honeymoon.... and right after that we see framed pics of Taylor and Karlie at Big Sur

Well in the KARma MV at the very end, the camera pans up and flies into the clouds, in which after traveling through the CLOUDS we come back out through a steaming cup of COFFEE. Which is quite literally a visual representation of the Carly Simon lyrics.

And everyone knows who was named after Carly Simon, the modern Carly Simon to Taylor being named after James Taylor, yup you guessed it. KARlie, on a song called KARma, in which in general Karlie has said all the people close to her call her KAR.

The proof is in the art, I didn't put it there, Taylor did, I just found it because she wanted it to be. And it's beyond silly to ignore all these blatant signs right in front of us

[you-can-be-what-you-want-to-be]

obviously op is an idiot but also: remember the more repressed a culture is the weirder they get with it! There’s a reason America doesn’t write almost any yaoi and counties where it’s illegal to be gay and less culturally acceptable to show interest in people and just blatantly say things do! You think hentai is bad now? Imagine you aren’t allowed to have any characters interact like people or have weird power dynamics or lean into guard dog vibes and then there’s normal dogs. What do you think is going to happen there? Is there perhaps a connection between the birth of foot fetish and ankles being considered scandalous and 18+? How about the popularity of pale frail fainting women right as everyone was dying of TB? It’s almost like people have a desire to express themselves through sex and if you don’t give them an outlet they’ll create an even weirder one from necessity? How about all of number six, if you are avoiding gendered tropes, could it lead to even MORE Mpreg a/b/o guy in maid dress? What about a whole new trope where instead of men hating each other since that’s one of the three emotions they’re allowed to show without judgement, any stated indifference is proof since that’s the next level down from hate and could be used as a lady doth protest too much? sure don’t agree with op but I am curious how insane people would get with this level of forced repression

general techniques to avoid gross shipping of your characters

have most characters be non-minors, around the same age range. this is mostly to minimize underage nonsense.

while family relationships are important, save them as background elements, explored every now and then. focus mainly on the bonds of non-related characters and how their different backgrounds play off each other.

limit the overly edgy tone, where pain and suffering are near-romanticized. try to emphasize wholesomeness, health, and the various ways characters can have good relationships despite their differences. a lot of nintendo franchises are good examples.

avoid creating significant characters who are utterly irredeemable with harmful ethics. (for me personally, i limit elements such as abuse and discrimination for background conflicts while presenting more interesting, morally gray arguments, where either side is right/flawed) if you’re going to have a villain, either make them team rocket goofy or classic disney fun.

just. try not to have characters + relationships rely on racial tropes. if you overly rely on a tough dark-skinned / dainty light-skinned formula, you’re going to see some racist shipping. mix it up. round ‘em out.

same goes for gendered tropes. if a dude is downright violent and irresponsible and a level-headed girl has to put up with his flaws without him facing consequence, that’s a downright unbalanced relationship. and do keep in mind that if two boys utterly despise each other, people will absolutely take that a certain way. again, with #3, try to play off disdain as comedic or with exception rather than constant seething hatred.

obviously these aren’t hard and fast rules, and what/how you create will vary. but it’s how i generally approach my work

[casscainmainly]

I really like your meta content on Cass and one of the reasons why I actually read Batgirl 2000 and 2024 is some of the things I read here

maybe you've already answered something similar, but... thoughts/headcanons/whatever you want on Duke&Cass? I would love to see more on them in the future ngl I liked what I saw with Orphan

OMG DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HAPPY THIS ASK MAKES ME. ANOTHER BG 2000 AND 24 READER THE WORLD IS AMAZING. I hope you enjoyed them!!!!!!! And also asking about Duke & Cass... this ask is everything to me 😭��

I'm not the best at headcanons but I made a post wayyy back where I was talking about their book tastes, and I think they'd have a little detective fiction book club!! But Cass is into cosies like Agatha Christie whereas Duke is into American hardboiled a la Raymond Chandler, and they'd argue a lot about which genre is better. Also, they don't read books at the same time anymore because Duke gets really focused on solving the mystery before it's revealed which in turn sparks Cass' competitive spirit and then they're both competing to solve the murder and forget to enjoy the book. So they've decided the club is just reading together in silence, sipping hot chocolate 💖. And sometimes if they get tired of reading Duke will play some heavy metal for Cass to dance to!!

One interesting thing about them is their respective views on family. Cass' morality is so predicated on the belief that children do not have to be like their parents, whereas Duke's outlook is steeped in honouring and furthering his parents' legacy. And they can both project these ideas onto other people - Cass with the various children she meets in Batgirl (2000), and Duke with his somewhat snide comments on other people's families in WAR and Gotham Nights. In certain scenarios, I can see this being a point of tension for them. I ALSO very much miss their siblinghood from Outsiders, I really hope he shows up in BG 24 soon!!!

Thinking about BG 24, Cass associating Duke with 'hope' is sooo important to me. It's something that doesn't quite come across in Outsiders, but Duke as a character is BUILT on hope. All throughout Snyder's writing of Duke and We Are Robin, Duke is a symbol for hope, rehabilitation, and belief in Gotham as a city. Cass pulling that out as her main takeaway from Duke is so MAGICAL. Like it shows such a deep level of respect & understanding of Duke and what he stands for!!! And hope is a trait also built into Cass' character, a fundamental tenet of her belief in redemption. This hope that people can and will be better is ingrained in both of them, and that's why although I think they do butt heads, they ultimately love each other so much and connect to each other so well.

ANYWAY I'm eagerly anticipating the next Duke + Cass interaction, may it come soon!!!

[z-eel]

i'm craving cnc jegulus/wolfstar/wolfstarbucks/all four of them - like i'm talking rough, nasty, borderline concerning cnc.

itch my scratch? please?

mmh concerning levels... i feel like i provided...

(warning: celestial polycule and its cnc but doesn't exactly feel like it is)

They had planned this, James and Remus, one month of carefully asked questions and two weeks of actual preparations. dating the black brothers came with that level of dedication because Regulus was too suspicious to let anything go and Sirius was too clingy to let anyone do anything but they had a lot of it thanks to Peter, Barty, and Evan who insisted they receive compensation for the help. that what the camera was for, but also because James would want to get off on this for years to come.

they were blindfold the both of them, told to stay quiet as Remus guided Regulus onto the bed. Remus on his knees making sure to rest Regulus on his lap holding both his arms in one hand as he played with Regulus. hand growing wet as he played between Regulus' legs.

he only raised his eyes as he looked over at Sirius who had his hands tied back while James was sucking on his dick making sure to get it as slick as possible. Sirius gasped, whined, jerked as he tried not to thrust into James mouth.

part of him wanted to forget the plan entirely but a choked out whine from Regulus pulled him back, no this was gonna be good. so he needed to focus.

he pulled off Sirius and guided him to the bed. you could still hear the sounds of Remus wet fingers opening up Regulus. they didn't even have to say anything before Remus took his fingers out and stuffed him in Regulus mouth, ensuring he wouldn't make a sound. James gripped onto Sirius neck as he slowly took Sirius cock and press him against Regulus. the brother groaned breathlessly.

James was teasing both of them, moving Sirius, letting his dick catch, pressing him in a little before pulling it out. and it was like that, connecting before James took it all away. Remus laughed when Regulus squirmed uncomfortably.

'don't be mean James, can't you seen he's desperate'

and Remus had been talking about Regulus but it was Sirius who was early nodding him head.

James hummed as he positioned Sirius, he leaned close to Sirius ear and gave him the go ahead.

'go on padfoot, start breeding your bitch.'

and it was at the name that Regulus started to fight. James couldn't see his eyes but he could guess the wide eyed expression with the way he was pulling on Remus, but Remus just pressed his finger further on his tongue making him gag, keeping him quiet.

Sirius was slow to start, getting used to the pressure around his dick but it was funny trying to find a rhythm with his hands tied behind his back. James wanted to laugh.

'you like it padfoot. do you like your present?'

and it was in the confidence in his nod that made James take out his own dick and press himself on a still roughly fucked Sirius. he was sensitive and sore James knew that but Sirius always squeaked pretty when he did it. not to mention that Remus was getting gesturing to take of the blind folds now that Regulus had stopped fighting and was letting out these short gasping moans at every thrust.

there looks of suprise were everything. Regulus looking up at Sirius in pure horror while Sirius was trying to pull out of his little brother only to force himself open on James. only the head of his dick still attached to Regulus but James saw this a beautiful opportunity.

fucking into Sirius causing him to push himself back into Regulus who was groaning at the intrusion. and again Sirius tried to pull out but this it was James make sure each one of his thrusts were powerful enough to make Regulus feel it.

'come on pads, you were telling me how much you liked it, were you lying to me? you know how I feel about lying.'

Sirius looked past Regulus, up at Remus and shook his head. Remus smiles and pulled his fingers out of Regulus and took hold of his Sirius hair and pulled him to his brother’s face.

'show tell him how much you like it padfoot. tell him how much you wanted to stick that dick in his pretty little cunt. go on, tell your little brother how much you wanted to fuck him.

'go on Sirius tell how. you screamed out his name while fucking me. tell him how much you jeck of thinking of him, tell him that you like it when i call you big brother, tell him that you've wanted to fuck him since the day he cut his hair, go one padfoot.'

but Sirius was quiet staring at Regulus whose eyes were getting glassy and whose mouth was wide open letting out soft moans. Remus refused to be challenged and focused his face down on Regulus.

'kiss your little brother Sirius, we all know you want too.'

[mylastmoleculeofserotonin]

How is Silco actively trying to make her mental health worse for his personal gain

Did we watch the same show??

I’m planning to make a post going more in depth on this later, but basically it boils down to:

1) He takes her history with Vi and twists his with Vander to make it seem similar as a way to create a false sense of closeness and solidarity between them. He uses this as “proof” that she cannot rely on anyone else, making her extremely dependent on him and him alone for everything from getting her basic needs met, to emotional support. Which alone is bad enough for one’s mental health, not to mention that his approval and affection is connected to how well she performs in missions/what she does to further his plans. Now where I got the intentionality from is that what happened between Silco and Vander was, to put it generously, a conflict of ideologies between two adults, whereas what happened with Vi and Powder was the heat of the moment getting the better of Vi after Powder accidentally killed their whole family as kids. And Silco knew this: prior to the time skip, the only things he says to/about Vander are about their ideologies, how he doesn’t hate him for trying to murder him, and that this whole thing isn’t personal, it’s a necessary step in his plan, the base violence necessary for change. However, that narrative changes completely when he talks to Jinx about it. Silco overemphasized/exaggerated how close he and Vander were and completely downplayed the ideological reasons that pushed them into conflict since that was 100% not what came between Vi and Powder, instead implying it came out of nowhere. Also he talks about it a lot to Jinx even though he was supposedly over it, creating too much disparity for there not to have been at least some level of twisting the story. (Now, even if he genuinely did see it as that harsh of a betrayal and truly is a deeply still affected by it, dumping it onto his teenage daughter who supposedly went through the same thing and using it to tell her to never rely on anyone else while he fully trusts and relies upon at least Sevika if not some other of his operatives, making it still an intentional action to worsen her mental health).

2) he encourages her conflict of identity: Jinx, in season one, is still torn between her identities as Powder and Jinx, and the mentally healthy and constructive thing to do would be to help her accept both parts of herself to create an identity where “I destroy everything I touch” isn’t the core of it (as we see with AU Powder). But that’s the exact opposite of what Silco does. He creates a false dichotomy between Powder and Jinx, saying that one is the source of all her weaknesses and needs to die and the other is perfect and can do no wrong. Accepting and embracing one’s shortcomings is necessary for good and stable mental health, however, Jinx feeling like she’s not allowed to be weak and has to be perfect like Silco says she is, lest she disappoints/lets him down is one of the worst things for one’s mental health. Plus the fact that what made her become Jinx was one mistake and the Powder=mistakes=weakness/Jinx=perfection=strength narrative he spins for her doesn’t allow for her to process her trauma and encourages her to push aside any mistakes she makes and bottle up the subsequent emotions which also is awful for her mental health.

3) He gives a very young, traumatized kid military grade weapons and has her run jobs to hurt her community for his crime empire. Not to mention that one of those said weapon is explosives, the very thing that caused her so much trauma. Also, he has her make another hextech explosive and when she says no, it’s too traumatizing, he still forces her to do it and uses it as an opportunity to bring up the first two points.

4) He only shows his approval/gives her affection when she is successful. The only times we see him be affectionate/approving of her is when she steals the hex tech gemstone and helps him with his eye. Meanwhile, when she is clearly suffering after the mission in episode 3, he only addresses it in terms of “what happened and how can we fix it” while barely looking at her before sending her away. The last thing Jinx needs is to be deprived of connection when she fails at something/makes a mistake as that was also at the center of her past trauma, which Silco is fully aware of and yet still does to her anyway.

5) the only time where we really see that he may genuinely care about her is when he is prepared to sacrifice the peace treaty for her. However, we get to hear his true thoughts about her and it is clear that he sees her as his undoing bc he couldn’t help but grow attached to her. Which definitely implicates that he was actively trying to avoid forging emotional connections with her while he makes her so dependent on him. This is reinforced by the fact that he saw Vander’s kids as prizes to be won, not children to be adopted or even people to be cared for, but tools to be used.

6) and this one isn’t one that he would have for certain known and actively used against her, but Powder’s main motivation is to help those she cares about, and with Silco, helping him is equated with hurting others, which again world exacerbate her conflict of identity and making it extraordinarily difficult to see herself as a good person, which is also a key factor in children’s development and mental health.

And out of doing all this, he gains an unwaveringly loyal teenage super soldier who everyone in the undercity is deeply terrified of.

Now with all that said, this isn’t meant as any hate towards Silco or anyone who likes him. I find him an extremely well written and compelling character. I just think he’s an awful person.

[king-of-men]

I agree that what's going on in these samples is not really reading and understanding, but I'm going to very slightly defend the "problematic readers" anyway. Here's one of the Dickens sentences:

Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.

and here is the summary thereof that the authors let stand in for all the problematic ones:

There’s just fog everywhere.

That's, like... a perfectly sensible summary? It's not a *super* long sentence, and even so the fact that Dickens is being paid by the word does rather shine through; in terms of the actual information it contains, "fog everywhere" is basically what there is. (Fine, fine, "fog on the river" if you like.) Ok, there's some ambiguity in the study between "summarize" and "translate", it's not entirely clear what the subjects were told their task is, but to the extent it's to summarize then, like, what do you want here? You can't well include all the details of where the fog is going, without making the summary as long as the original and presumably defeating the purpose. I'll admit that the next bit is more problematic:

Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats.

(Subject is asked what's in the sentence other than fog)

I know there’s train, and there’s like, like the industrial part of the city?

Looks like they free-associated from 'caboose' to 'train' without noticing all the other words that would indicate 'ships' instead, and then from "transport infrastructure" to "industrial" which is not actually unreasonable but we're specifically in the harbor. This is, like, 2018-LLM levels of fixating on one keyword. But the authors go on to editorialize:

By reducing all these details in the passage to vague, generic language, the subject does not read closely enough to follow the fog as it moves throughout the shipyards. And, as she continues to skip over almost all the concrete details in the following sentences, she never recognizes that this literal fog, as it expands throughout London, becomes a symbol for the confusion, disarray, and blindness of the Court of Chancery.

Well, yeah. She was asked to "translate into plain English", according to the abstract. No word was said about extracting the symbolism. Sometimes the fog is just blue; or at any rate, if you're literally asked to give the color of the fog in plain language, then "blue" is a much better translation of "cerulean" than "the color of the heavens", which includes the symbolism, would be.

Which brings me to another thing: What's in this for the subjects? Like, are they being paid for performance, or graded, or something? If they're paid just to show up, or worse still if they're doing these professors a favor, then... why should they bother to check in their brains? It's just one more makework reading task in a life presumably full of them, and this one doesn't even have the extremely vague connection of induction-into-the-middle-class-and-prosperity that a classroom test does. By all means argue that it's bad that these English-majoring students are so beaten down that they apparently don't care enough about English to enjoy extracting the meaning of a difficult text, and discussing it, for its own sake. But before critiquing their reading skills I would put them in a situation where their ability to extract meaning from a text mattered to them.

All that said, yeah, the dinosaur thing is just really very bad. And the whiskers are if possible even worse.

i appreciated this study: "They Can't Read Very Well: A Study of the Reading Comprehension Skills Of English Majors At Two Midwestern Universities"

essentially, a pair of professors set out to test their intuitive sense that students at the college level were struggling with complex text. they recruited 85 students, a mix of english majors and english education majors - so, theoretically, people focusing on literature, and people preparing to teach adolescents how to read literature - and had them read-while-summarizing the first seven paragraphs of dickens's bleak house (or as much as they made it through in the 20 minute session). they provided dictionaries and also said students could use their phones to look up whatever they wanted, including any unfamiliar words or references. they found that the majority of the students - 58%, or 49 out of the 85 students - functionally could not understand dickens at all, and only 5% - a mere 4 out of the 85 students - proved themselves proficient readers (leaving the remaining 38%, or 32 students, as what the study authors deemed "competent" students, most of whom could understand about half the literal meaning - pretty low bar for competence - although a few of whom, they note, did much better than the rest in this group if not quite well enough to be considered proficient).

what i really appreciated about this study was its qualitative descriptions of the challenges and reading behaviors of what the authors call "problematic readers" (that bottom 58%), which resonated strongly with my own experiences of students who struggle with reading. here's their blunt big picture overview of these 49 students:

The majority of these subjects could understand very little of Bleak House and did not have effective reading tactics. All had so much trouble comprehending concrete detail in consecutive clauses and phrases that they could not link the meaning of one sentence to the next. Although it was clear that these subjects did try to use various tactics while they read the passage, they were not able to use those tactics successfully. For example, 43 percent of the problematic readers tried to look up words they did not understand, but only five percent were able to look up the meaning of a word and place it back correctly into a sentence. The subjects frequently looked up a word they did not know, realized that they did not understand the sentence the word had come from, and skipped translating the sentence altogether.

the idea that they had so many trouble with every small piece of a text that they could not connect ideas on a sentence by sentence basis is very familiar to me from teaching and tutoring, as was the habit of thought seen in the example of the student who gloms on to the word "whiskers" in a sea of confusion and guesses incorrectly that a cat is present - struggling readers, in my experience, seem to use familiar nouns as stepping stones in a flood of overwhelm, hopping as best they can from one seemingly familiar image to the next. so was this observation, building off the example of a student who misses the fact that dickens is being figurative when he imagines a megalodon stalking the streets of london:

She first guesses that the dinosaur is just “bones” and then is stuck stating that the bones are “waddling, um, all up the hill” because she can see that Dickens has the dinosaur moving. Because she cannot logically tie the ideas together, she just leaves her interpretation as is and goes on to the next sentence. Like this subject, most of the problematic readers were not concerned if their literal translations of Bleak House were not coherent, so obvious logical errors never seemed to affect them. In fact, none of the readers in this category ever questioned their own interpretations of figures of speech, no matter how irrational the results. Worse, their inability to understand figurative language was constant, even though most of the subjects had spent at least two years in literature classes that discussed figures of speech. Some could correctly identify a figure of speech, and even explain its use in a sentence, but correct responses were inconsistent and haphazard. None of the problematic readers showed any evidence that they could read recursively or fix previous errors in comprehension. They would stick to their reading tactics even if they were unhappy with the results.

i have seen this repeatedly, too - actually i was particularly taken with how similar this is to the behavior of struggling readers at much younger ages - and would summarize the hypothesis i have forged over time as: struggling readers do not expect what they read to make sense. my hypothesis for why this is the case is that their reading deficits were not attended to or remediated adequately early enough, and so, in their formative years - the early to mid elementary grades - they spent a lot of time "reading" things that did not make sense to them - in fact they spent much more time doing this than they ever did reading things that did make sense to them - and so they did not internalize a meaningful subjective sense of what it feels like to actually read things.

like, i've said this before, but the year i taught third grade i had multiple students who told me they loved reading and then when i asked them about a book they were reading revealed that they had absolutely no idea what was going on - on a really basic literal level like "didn't know who said which lines of dialogue" and "couldn't identify which things or characters given pronouns referred to" - and were as best as i could tell sort of constructing their own story along the way using these little bits of things they thought they understood. that's what "reading" was, in their heads. and they were, in the curriculum/model that we used at the private school where i taught, receiving basically no support to clarify that that was not what reading was, nor any instruction that would actually help them with what they needed to do to improve (understand sentences) - and i realized over the course of that year that the master's program that had certified me in teaching elementary school had provided me with very little understanding of how to help these kids (with perhaps the sole exception of the class i took on communications disorders, not because these kids had communications disorders but because that was the only class where we ever talked, even briefly, about things like sentence structures that students may need instruction in and practice with to comprehend independently). when it comes to the literal, basic understanding of a text, the model of reading pedagogy i was taught has about 6 million little "tools" that all boil down to telling kids who functionally can't read to try harder to read. this is not productive, in my experience and opinion, for kids whose maximum effort persistently yields confusion. but things are so dysfunctional all the way up and down the ladder that you can be a senior in college majoring in english without anyone but a pair of professors with a strong work ethic noticing that you can't actually read.

couple other notes:

obviously it's a small study but i'm not sure i see a reason to believe these are particularly outlierish results (ACT scores - an imperfect metric but not a meritless one IMO for reading specifically, where the task mostly really is to read a set of texts written for the educated layperson and answer factual questions about them - were a little bit above the national average)

the study was published last year, but the research was conducted january to april 2015. so there's no pandemic influence, no AI issue - these are millennials who now would span roughly ages 28-32 (i guess it's possible one of the four first-year students was one of the very first members of gen z lol). if you're in your late 20s or early 30s, we are talking about people your age, and whatever the culprit is here, it was happening when you were in school.

i think some people might want to blame this on NCLB but i find this unconvincing for a variety of reasons. first of all, NCLB did not pass because everyone in 2001 agreed that education was super hunky-dory; in fact, the sold a story podcast outlines how an explicit goal of NCLB was to train teachers in systematic phonics instruction, because that was not the norm when NCLB was passed, and an unfortunate outcome was that phonics became politicized in ed world. second, anyone who understands anything about reading should need about ten minutes max to spend some time on standardized test prep and recognize that if your goal is truly to maximize scores... then the vast majority of your instructional time should be spent on improving actual reading skills because you actually can't meaningfully game these tests by "practicing main idea questions" (timothy shanahan addresses this briefly near the top of this post). so i find it very difficult to believe that any school that pivoted to multiple choice drill time in an attempt to boost reading scores was teaching reading effectively pre-NCLB, because no set of competent literacy professionals would think that would work even for the goal of raising test scores. third, NCLB mandated yearly testing in grades 3-8 but only one test year in high school; kansas set its reading and math test year in high school as tenth grade. so theoretically these kids all had two years of sweet sweet freedom from NCLB in which their teachers could have done whatever the fuck they wanted to teach these kids to actually read. the fact that they didn't suggests perhaps there were other problems afoot. fourth, and maybe most saliently for this particular study, the sample text was the first seven paragraphs of a novel - in other words, the exact kind of short incomplete text that NCLB allegedly demanded excessive time spent on. i'm not really sure what universe it makes sense in that students who can't read the first seven paragraphs of a novel would have become much better reader if everything else had been the same but they had been making completely wack associations based on nonsense guesses for all 300 pages instead. (if you read the study it's really clear that for problematic readers, things go off the rails immediately, in a way that a good program targeted at teaching mastery of text of 500 words or less would have done something about.)

all but 3 of the students reported A's and B's in their english classes and, again, 69% of them are juniors and seniors, so like... i mean idk kudos to these professors for being like "hold up can these kids actually read?" but clearly something is wack at the college level too [in 2015] if you can make your way through nearly an entire english major without being able to read the first seven paragraphs of a dickens novel. (once again i really do encourage you to look at the qualitative samples in the study, lest you think i am being uncharitable by summarizing understandable misunderstandings or areas of confusion that may resolve themselves with further exposure to the text as "can't read.") not to mention the fact that most students could not what they had learned in previous or current english classes and when asked to name british and american authors and/or works of the nineteenth century, roughly half the sample at each college could name at most one.

the authors of the study are struck by the fact that students who cannot parse the first 3 sentences of bleak house feel very confident about their ability to read the entire novel, and discover that this seeming disconnect is resolved by the fact that these students seem to conceptualize "reading" as "skimming and then reading sparknotes." i think it's really tempting to Kids These Days this phenomenon (although again these are people who in some cases have now been in the workforce for a decade) and categorize it as laziness or a lack of effort, but i think that there is, as i described above, a real and sincere confusion over what "reading" is in which this makes a certain logical sense because it's not like they have some store of actual reading experiences to compare it to. i also think it's pretty obvious looking at just how wildly severed from actual textual comprehension their readings are that these are not - or at least not entirely - students who could just work harder and master the entirety of bleak house all on their own. like i don't think you get from "charles dickens is describing a bunch of dinosaur bones actually walking the streets of london" to comfortably reading nineteenth century literature by just trying harder. i really just don't (and i say that acknowledging i personally have had students who like... were good readers if i was forcing them to work at it constantly... but i have also had students, including ones getting ready to enter college, who were clearly giving me everything they had and what they had was at the present moment insufficient). i think that speaks to a missing skillset that they don't know are missing, because they don't have any other experience of "reading" to compare it to.

just wanna highlight again that although they don't give the breakdown some of these students are not just english majors but english education majors a.k.a. the high school english teachers of tomorrow. some of them may be teaching high school english right now, in case anyone wishes to consider whether "maybe some high school english teachers can't read the first seven paragraphs of bleak house?" should be kept in mind when we discuss present-day educational ills.